I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for introducing the Bill. Governments and Secretaries of State of all colours in the past 20-plus years have grappled with the incredibly difficult question of how to provide better outcomes for victims and survivors of the troubles. This has been fraught with political, legal and moral hurdles, many of which have often been considered insurmountable. So my right hon. Friend deserves immense credit for grasping the nettle and introducing the proposals when previous Governments have all concluded that the easiest thing to do was simply to do nothing. There has long been broad agreement across Northern Ireland that the current system for addressing the legacy of the troubles simply does not work. Victims, survivors and their families have waited far too long for answers and, in order to allow Northern Ireland and its people to look towards the future, the Government are right in bringing forward this Bill.
The years of the troubles were an awful period in the history of our United Kingdom, with tragic loss of life and severe injuries inflicted on thousands of people, but it should always be remembered at this point that 90% of the deaths in the troubles were deliberate killings by terrorists who set out to inflict untold misery in pursuit of their perverse political agenda. Being in my early 30s, I am of course not old enough to remember the worst of the troubles, but I do recall the signing of the Belfast agreement. The agreement has stood the test of time and laid the foundations for peace and security in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years. However, it
came at a tremendous cost. In 1998 the prison gates were opened and terrorists guilty of horrific crimes were released without fully serving their sentences.
One can only imagine the tremendous anger, distress and upset that this must have caused, not just to the victims and their families but to those communities who were devastated by the barbaric actions of terrorist groups such as the IRA. This, alongside the on-the-run letters, was a complete corruption of justice. Some Members of the House opposed the Belfast agreement at the time, for this reason and many others, and it is easy to see why. However, we cannot look backwards; we must try to deal with the present and move Northern Ireland forward to protect the peace process and create prosperity, and we must do so while seeking to provide some form of closure to victims and families who are understandably still hurting.
Victims of wrongdoing should always have access to justice for the atrocities committed during the troubles, but the harsh reality is that these crimes occurred many decades ago and the likelihood of successful prosecutions diminishes with every passing day, as we have seen with the recent collapse of several trials. It is obvious that the current system is failing. It delivers neither truth nor justice for the vast majority of families. The emphasis that the Bill places on information recovery will help many families who have waited far too long for answers and may help to bring about some closure for the events of the past. The process will allow us to see more information than ever before on the circumstances of many crimes that resulted in horrific injuries and families losing loved ones.
The process will also provide certainty to those veterans who have for far too long faced the threat of reinvestigation, which has, in a number of cases, destroyed the final decades of their lives and inflicted great anguish and pain on their lives and those of their loved ones. It is absolutely appalling that veterans have been subjected to suspicion and have had to live their lives in fear of prosecution for so many years. By ending the cycle of vexatious criminal investigations and protracted legal proceedings, we will finally deliver on our manifesto commitment to protect veterans. That will be warmly welcomed by my constituents in Blackpool.
I am pleased that the Government have listened to concerns about automatic access to immunity and that it will now be granted on the basis of an individual’s co-operation with the commission’s inquiries and acknowledgement of their role in troubles-related incidents. The Bill will give veterans the certainty and finality that they deserve but, of course, leaves the door open to the prosecution of those who do not co-operate or share information with the commission.
I welcome the proposal to include an oral history initiative, which would create opportunities for people to share their experiences of and perspectives on the troubles. Such an initiative needs to be handled with the utmost care and sensitivity. There can never, under any circumstances, be a moral equivalence between those who perpetrated violence and those who tried to bring it to an end. An oral history archive must never be used to rewrite history from the perspective of those republicans who inflicted so much misery on their innocent victims and on the people of Northern Ireland as a whole. We must never agree to a version of history that seeks to legitimise the indiscriminate and barbaric actions of terrorists such as the IRA.